So...where to begin.
I listened to this book in the car, mostly because I'm cleaning up my current YA novel and it's written in a style that reminds me of John Green or other similar authors.
I went in having no idea what it was about. That's how I listen to YA novels in the car. I don't even read the cover jacket just because I like the surprise, so I didn't even know that the book was about cancer kids until I started it.
It follows the narrator, a sixteen year old girl named Hazel with terminal cancer as she meets a boy and falls in love. It sounds hokey, and sometimes the kids were so pretentious and annoying that I was actually rooting for the cancer, but by the time I was a quarter of the way through, the author drew me in in a way I haven't been drawn into a book in years.
I've never been brought to tears by a book before (unless you count the time I read Talisman by Stephen King when I was in high school and had the flu) but this book did it. Not full blown, tears running down your face, sobbing or anything like that, but damn. There were plenty of times where it was hard to hold back. And I have to remind you, I didn't even like the characters. That's how powerful John Green is; he made my cry about characters I didn't even like.
So should you read this? Yes. A thousand yeses. Get past the annoying narrator, and listen to her story, which is basically an extended self-eulogy. On the surface, The Fault in Our Stars is a book about death, but after finishing it, I realized that it's actually a book about life.
It's a book that reminds you that life isn't fair. It's a book that reminds you that your only purpose on this planet is to live. To treat every second as the treasure it is and never take anything for granted because just when you think you're getting the hang of life, everything can be taken away in the blink of an eye.
Oh, and cancer sucks, too.
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